All eyes are on the newly-ranked No. 25 Auburn Tigers (20-9, 5-4 SEC) and head coach Butch Thompson, who is going for his 200th win as Auburn’s skipper, in their weekend series with the No. 12 Vanderbilt Commodores (21-7, 4-5 SEC).
“We want to hook it up and we want to play some great baseball here at Plainsman Park, which we should,” Thompson said. “This is an opportunity to be hanging from the rafters on an SEC weekend. I fully expect and I’m excited to see something amazing with our crowd with that connection with A-Day.”
Saturday is a full day for Auburn athletics. Focus will shift from football to baseball when the match between Auburn and Vanderbilt on Saturday begins at 4 p.m. CST, soon after Auburn football finishes their spring scrimmage game known as A-Day.
Here’s some main themes in Auburn’s series with Vanderbilt:
History
The head-to-head series between the two squads leans in Auburn’s direction 96-64, but Vanderbilt has taken the last four of those matchups. The last time these two teams squared up, Vanderbilt won 11-1 back on May 22, 2019.
Thompson also eyes a huge milestone as Auburn’s head coach. With a 199-151 record, he will clinch his 200th win at Auburn in his next victory. The team will get three opportunities to lock up that accolade for Thompson against Vanderbilt.
Team trends
The Tigers enter the matchup looking for their third straight series win in conference play for the first time since 2017 after going on the road to beat Texas A&M and LSU two games out of three.
Continuing its good fortunes, Auburn came out on top 6-4 in its most recent action over UAB in Birmingham on Tuesday.
However, the script flips back to Plainsman Park this weekend, where Auburn last fell in a mid-week matchup with Jacksonville State on March 29. Auburn is 11-6 at home this season, but it lost its only league series there this season to Ole Miss.
While Auburn is on the rise and into the top 25 for the first time since week two of 2021, Vanderbilt is hoping for a better result than last weekend, when top-ranked Tennessee stormed into Nashville and swept the Commodores.
Vanderbilt’s woes against Tennessee came as a result of cold bats. The Commodores only pushed across four runs in the series on 11 hits, five of which came in the first six innings of the series.
Finishing out the series with the Volunteers, Vanderbilt was blanked in a complete-game shutout by Drew Beam on two hits and no walks.
Releasing their frustration, the Commodores rebounded with a 12-2 thumping of Austin Peay on Tuesday and racked up 13 hits in the process.
Offensive onslaught
Auburn has tallied into the double digits in runs 11 times this season and has not lost any of those games. The Tigers boast a red-hot leadoff hitter in Blake Rambusch as well as the nation’s leader in on-base percentage at .607, first baseman Sonny DiChiara.
Rambusch has posted a .383 batting average this season, while leading the SEC in hits (46). He also provides speed to the lineup, leading the club with eight steals.
DiChiara has been on an offensive tear all season long. He leads his team in batting average (.457), OPS (1.508), slugging percentage (.901%), OBP (.607), home runs (8), RBIs (26), doubles (12) and walks (28), and his batting average is the highest of by an Auburn player through 29 games since at least 1993.
Despite the poor offensive output against Tennessee, Vanderbilt has a combination of contact hitting and speed. The Commodores rank third in the SEC with a .303 batting average and their lineup consists of four hitters with batting averages above .300. Those four are also a perfect 28-of-28 on stolen base attempts.
Leadoff hitter Enrique Bradfield leads the movement with 18 swiped bags on the campaign. He went 1-for-2 with a double and a walk on Tuesday.
The team as a whole is 45-for-49 when stealing bases this season. Auburn pitchers and catchers will need to keep a consistent eye on the Vanderbilt runners, or that is likely an area where the Commodores will gain the advantage this weekend.
Pitching matchups
Trying to mimic Tennessee’s success and keep the Commodore bats quiet in the series, Auburn starters look to find their groove in Plainsman Park.
Both team’s aces take the mound for game one. Lefty Hayden Mullins (2-1, 3.72 ERA) will battle with Vanderbilt’s Chris McElvain (4-1, 3.16 ERA).
Game two on Saturday features a matchup of Trace Bright (2-2, 2.70 ERA) and lefty Carter Holton (4-2, 3.89 ERA).
For game three, Auburn sends Joseph Gonzalez to the mound for his second start since his finger injury to face Vanderbilt’s Patrick Reilly (2-1, 1.21).
Gonzalez looks to build on his success in his comeback start against LSU where he went six innings and surrendered three runs in a winning effort in the series finale.
Close Finishes
The Tigers have come out on top in 11 contests in which they trailed at some point and are 6-3 in games that were decided by a single run. This is a huge improvement from last season, when the team went 6-11 on the season in one-run games.
Closer Blake Burkhalter is a huge factor in this improvement. He is 3-0 this season with six saves, and he owns a 3.80 ERA. The junior has been incredibly efficient this season with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 29-1.
Even when he doesn’t record the final out of the game, Burkhalter has been instrumental in helping Auburn hold on in close games this season. Despite his closer role, he has come into games before the ninth inning several times this season to work out of jams.
On the other hand, Vanderbilt has very rarely been in tight contests. It is just 1-1 in one-run ballgames with a 4-3 loss to Oklahoma State and a 5-4 win over Michigan.
The middle innings have been most crucial for the Commodores. They are outscoring their opponents 83-21 across the fourth, fifth and sixth innings in their wins this season, but they have been outscored 19-8 in the middle innings in the team's seven losses on the year.
Game times
The first pitch of the series comes at 6 p.m. CST on Friday, followed by game two on Saturday at 4 p.m. and Sunday’s game three at 1 p.m. All three games will be broadcast on SEC Network+ from Plainsman Park in Auburn.
“We have to be more prepared to face Vanderbilt than anyone on our schedule this season,” Thompson said.
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